[Has the era of warfarin terminated?].

Warfarin has for a long time been considered the "gold standard" of oral anticoagulant therapy. Positive effects of this agent are unambiguously supported by accumulated evidence-based data convincingly confirming a decrease in the risk for thrombolytic complications in patients with many diseases of the cardiovascular system: atrial fibrillation, thrombosis of deep veins of extremities, pulmonary artery thromboembolism. However, warfarin has a series of disadvantages complicating its practical application: the necessity of individual adjustment of the dose to maintain the International Normalized Ratio (INR) within the limits of the target values, clinically significant interactions with other drugs and foodstuffs.

[X-ray densitometric characteristics of bone mineral density in patients with impaired biliation].

Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry was used to examine 20 patients with obstructive jaundice, who had undergone external biliary drainage in the first surgical stage. A clinical comparison group comprised 34 patients without hepatobiliary diseases. Bone mineral density was measured in the lumbar spine, proximal femur, and ultradistal antibrachium.

[An immunological analysis of bacterial persistence in the bone marrow].

A method for the evaluation of bacterial persistence in the bone marrow in association with particular clonogenic target cells was developed. The method was based on the negative selection of cells expressing microbial antigens after treatment with hyperimmune antiserum specific to a given infective agent and the subsequent quantitation of target cells thus eliminated in appropriate assays. Using this approach, we demonstrated that Mycoplasma arthritidis and L-forms of Streptococcus strain L-406 were capable of persisting in murine bone marrow in close association with CFUs-7 (a subpopulation of hematopoietic stem cells) for at least several months after experimental infection.

Biological activities of lipoteichoic acid and peptidoglycan-teichoic acid of Bacillus subtilis 168 (Marburg).

To evaluate the suitability of Bacillus subtilis as a production host of heterologous proteins for pharmaceutical purposes, we assessed the biological activity of this bacterium and its major cell envelope components, lipoteichoic acid (LTA) and peptidoglycan-teichoic acid complex (PG-TA) in several eukaryotic effector assays. LTA and PG-TA were found to be non-toxic for mice and guinea-pigs in a short-term toxicity assay. PG-TA was weakly pyrogenic and weakly mitogenic.

[Antigen-nonspecific suppression of the immune response in mice as affected by pertussis vaccine].

A study was made of the suppressorgenic action of killed whole-cell pertussis vaccine prepared from B. pertussis strains 475 and 305. Thymic and splenic lymphocytes of CBA mice 3-7 days following intraperitoneal or intravenous inoculation of pertussis vaccine were shown to inhibit in an antigen-nonspecific manner the plaque-forming cell (PFC) production in the adoptive transfer experiments.